What is affect?

Affect

Affect, in psychology, refers to the experience of feeling or emotion. It is a broad term encompassing a range of subjective experiences, often described as valence (positive or negative) and arousal (intensity). It differs from mood, which is a more sustained and pervasive emotional state. Affect is considered more immediate and reactive to specific stimuli or events.

Key aspects of affect include:

• Valence: This refers to the positivity or negativity of the feeling. For example, joy has positive valence, while sadness has negative valence.
• Arousal: This describes the intensity of the feeling, ranging from calm to excited or from bored to terrified.
• Expression: Affect is often expressed through facial expressions, body language, tone of voice, and other behavioral cues. These expressions can be conscious or unconscious.

Related concepts include:

• Emotion: Emotion is a complex psychological state involving subjective experience, physiological responses, and behavioral expressions. Affect is often considered a component of emotion.
• Mood: Mood is a more sustained and pervasive emotional state that influences a person's overall outlook.
• Feeling: Feeling refers to the subjective experience of emotion.

Understanding affect is crucial in fields such as clinical psychology (understanding and treating affective%20disorders), social psychology (studying emotional%20contagion), and neuroscience (investigating the neural%20basis%20of%20emotion). It also plays a significant role in areas such as marketing and human-computer interaction.